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Classism, Love and Art
Performativity & Resistance: The Refusal & Suppression of Light in Western Art Academies & Cultural Institutions
Wirya Budaghi
I am speaking of the art of artists who, year after year, during their childhood, did unbearable work with their families on enormous plantations, in factories that makes bricks or who spent years weaving carpets at home. From children whose older siblings, for financial reasons, had to leave school to support their parents by getting work. Because older children showed solidarity with their parents through their physical efforts, younger siblings were able to continue at school. Parents who had to do inconceivable, killing labor in inhuman, unconscionable situations. The father in prison for political reasons, the mother with the children in the small, run-down, dark apartment, where they do embroidery work. Having experienced this life, yes, starting with such a life and such conditions, we have made our art for changing this life and shown that this art is a political act by communicating this life to the outside world. We have at least tried to embody the experiences and knowledge of our parents in our lives and our art so that non-colonial, non-capitalist knowledge and its paths of life continue to exist from generation to generation and we do not lose hope that justice will be born.
Solidarity in Capitalism
We were well instructed, trained, and schooled at home by our parents. We learned how to consider power and money as not being part of our individual lives or as part of our characters. We learned never to allow power and money to affect our lives, and how we could prevent making them our life’s goal. We learned that we should not forget love and art under any circumstances. To eat little, but to show solidarity. To not remain silent, but to speak out and to lead a conscious life.
Wars and waves of violence unleashed by capitalism have turned against us and yet could not long suppress this knowledge and feelings the way they intended to. We have started singing. In spite of the bans, we have learned our mother tongues and what our names mean. We have not allowed this violence to force its way into us and to lay waste to our feelings. Our arts began where the rich and middle class no longer wanted to live with us and we lived alone among ourselves.
In these difficulties and with these problems we began more and more to see the light and to sense more and more the vitality of our bodies, to allow that light to grow and blossom. We have expressed our knowledge and experiences visually, we have developed and manifested our language with the solidarity of others.
Class relegation as a result of flight
Flight devastates, quickly and easily, all of your capital types (in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense) locking you into a class descent that is extreme and absolute. Almost all of your capital is affected, be it financial, cultural, social, or symbolic. This applies, in particular, to minorities, such as politically persecuted artists, and above all to artists from Zahmatkesh families2 living in exile. These people are affected in many ways and even more intensely than others.
Flight also means your knowledge and educational degrees are devalued. Your language doesn’t help you either, it has no value, especially if your mother tongue is a non-colonial, endangered, or forbidden language. The paths that children from Zahmatkesh families followed in their native country to gain access to art and culture were not easy. Flight and exile in a new country makes things even more complex and difficult.
Art and the political self-conception of the left
Approaches to art and culture are, I think, classist in many countries. In Kurdistan, for example, where I was born and grew up. But there is solidarity and connectedness among the left and the progressives in Kurdistan. These political movements have been very interested in literature, music and art since their beginnings. They believe art is needed to bring about social and political change. Therefore, there were and are politically engaged artists (in Germany one would call them art mediators) who support children of Zahmatkesh families. They want to make the perspective of working-class children visible in and through art. My experience and the art projects in Berlin that I have developed with political and progressive left groups have shown me that this tradition is still very weak here. I have the impression that here in Germany the left progressive movement, the majority of whom are white Germans, believe that art is inherently capitalist. My artistic collaborations and the art projects I have tried to develop with these groups showed me that these groups do not believe in the importance and weight, the impact and courage, the potential and movement of art, especially refugee art.
Barriers to access to art and culture
On the other hand, it usually takes a formalized art education to be artistically active in an academic, institutional context in the Global North. However, access to Western art academies and cultural institutions is almost impossible for artists from marginalized minorities and the kind of life that entails, when access becomes possible they suddenly find themselves embroiled in a complex system with complex principles. Here, in these Western art academies and cultural institutions, is kyriarchy the first superpower and superstructure3, namely the principle of privilege and oppression simultaneously. This was my own experience in the master’s program at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and is what I also heard from other oppressed people (mostly BIPoC, but also white citizens*/migrants* from Eastern Europe). Such institutions give us the privilege of being there, but they also oppress us greatly.
By giving me privilege, the kyriarchal principle that prevails in Western art and culture institutions oppresses other persons. People who had the same life and childhood as I did and who fled but who, unlike me, are excluded. For example, I was admitted to the university as a refugee with an unlimited residency permit4. That makes me more privileged than other refugee artists who weren’t admitted and also come from a Zahmatkesh family. Because these refugee artists cannot attend university here and because the knowledge and degrees they obtained in their countries are not respected, their knowledge is at risk. In this case, the art academy is using me to create new forms of oppression against other members of my minority by giving me privileged access to institutional recognition and knowledge. After graduating from the UdK, I realized how privileged I was compared to others with refugee experience who also come from a Zahmatkesh family and tried to study here but were not accepted. Because she doesn’t have this kind of capital, but I do.
Of course, in the end, these privileges didn’t change my artistic life or my life in general much. But still I am aware of this oppression. I was shown solidarity in order to end up with these privileges; I was supported by friends for six months so I could be accepted at the UdK–from the recognition of my bachelor’s degree, CV, portfolio, assistance with translations, and various advice on preparing the presentation for the entrance exam. My flat mate played the university committee several times and practiced with me so that I could have this success.
The bureaucratic, classist acceptance process makes this path very difficult for artists like me who have few types of capital in their lives in the West. It’s even more difficult for refugees with a temporary residency status – I actually think it’s impossible. There are many who live in our city of Berlin who do not experience this solidarity. In Kurdistan-Iraq, where I have also lived with refugee status and where I completed my first art degree, the admission process took only one day–the person who made the decision was a working-class child himself and from a Zahmtkesh family.
Experiencing discrimination at art college
Western art academies welcome all incoming students equally, but only on the first day, and then that beautiful day is over! In your first seminar you will receive racist treatment from your lecturer, he may call you “stupid.” In your next class, you become a target for another teacher. All forms of discrimination take place. A system that constantly bashes your knowledge, your identity, your art. A system that tries to reduce your identity to the point where you no longer feel like an artist.
Refugees, non-white people, but also white non-Germans (e.g. from eastern or southern Europe) are not only discriminated against at art schools by white German male lecturers. There are also other groups who, despite their own experience of discrimination, oppress minorities such as refugees, BIPoC and white non-Germans. These groups include, for example, white German female lecturers, who although they have experienced oppression themselves and whose identities others attempt to reduce, still have the privilege of a professorship, i.e. power.
A student member of the department told me in conversation that ten complaints of discrimination had been filed in one year. A white German female lecturer replied to a letter from the anti-discrimination network in Berlin with which I had lodged a complaint, that my work “with three other colleagues […] from the institute had failed earlier,” which was not true. To justify herself and to delegitimize me, she didn’t mention that her colleague, a white German lecturer, had told the student council: “I’ve been abroad. Arab artists oppress their wives.” Or that he had called me stupid in his seminar, even though they and everyone else knew it had happened. She made me the problem and kept silent about the problems I had, i.e. racism and discrimination. Capitalism advances such a system with its money and the promise of profit and power. It uses such people and their networks, both inside and outside the art academy, and robs them of their conscience. The knowledge of refugees from Zahmatkesh families is suppressed by people who can be sure of their position and their power. Even when they present themselves as friends or supporters, they exclude others, they don’t take them seriously, they don’t stick to their consciences and the truth, but lie to defend their position.
Involuntary farewell to the art world
The truth is that I have said goodbye to the art world three times in my life. The first and second times in Kurdistan were for economic reasons, but I was able to return. I was shown a lot of solidarity from my art teacher, family and community. The first time I said farewell my art teacher made time for me, took my problem seriously, and took me and his best student, who was also my best friend, for a walk. He empowered me and showed me that capitalism would not destroy our connection. This teacher had financial difficulties himself. He had been able to complete his art studies, but then had to work as a taxi driver and was still able to teach but only for a little money. Together with 30 other artists, he founded the first association of visual artists in the city, of which I was also a member. On the day of our walk, at the end of a long conversation, he said to me: “You are leaving, but you will come back to us!” And I was able to return because there was a connection and I had the solidarity of my family and friends. But the friend who was there that day stopped making art after his father died because he had to go to work to support his family.
The third time, in Berlin, was not for economic reasons, but because I showed my own history, language and art. But Western art and culture institutions did not want to see them. But instead of explaining why they didn’t want it, they continued to rely on the principle of kyriarchy. They know there are plenty of people willing to go along with oppression and exclusion for a little bit of privilege and power. These people do not necessarily have to be AfD members, they can also be lecturers, art mediators, or cultural workers.
My mother’s words still reflect my life today. She said: “Rola5, the ones who always have to fight are the Zahmatkesh. For the rich, it doesn’t matter which system prevails, they will always be part of this system. The ones who always fight must are us.”
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.6
1_From the film “The Hope” (1970) by Yılmaz Güney, a Kurdish filmmaker and writer. “The Hope” is the story of a Zahmatkesh family (see footnote 2). It is the story of a father, Cabbar (Güney himself plays this role), who lives a cruel life with his wife, five children and an elderly mother. The family tries to survive in a damp and dirty apartment. Cabbar doesn’t have a good job and has a lot of debt. His only hope is the lottery tickets he keeps buying. He tied his hopes to these tickets. In this film, Güney shows the socio-economic injustice of the system. He shows people who fight alone and get no solidarity, who have no other choice and whose only alternative is to trust in luck.
2_ Zahmatkesh is one of the words used in the Kurdish language to refer to workers, especially those who cannot find work. In German, the word is translated as “poor.” In the Kurdish language, “zamatkesh” is used by left-wing movements as an empowering word.
3_ The word “kyriarchy,” coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, describes the workings of interconnected, interacting, multiplicative systems of domination and submission in which the same person may be oppressed in one context and privileged in another. The term has also been used frequently by Kurdish activist and journalist Behrouz Boochani to describe the systematic repression of Australia’s immigration policy.
4_ I have a permanent residency permit here in Germany, but still no citizenship. Since 2003 I have not had citizenship of any country. From 2003 to 2011 I was a refugee in Kurdistan-Iraq, always with a residency permit that was valid for only three, sometimes six months. I worked there as a freelance artist, journalist and graphic designer. Thanks to the protection of the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), I could not be deported to Iran. In 2010, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard listed my name as an anarchist and a person dangerous to Iranian national security and threatened me with the death penalty. In February 2012, after a six-month illegal journey through several countries, such as Turkey and Greece, I ended up in a large prison / camp for refugees in Bavaria. After that I was transported to another camp in south Bavaria, where I had to live until March 2013 with residency limited to a radius of 30 kilometers. I had to wait there until I got a three-year residency permit and could move to Berlin.
5_ “Rola” can be translated as “my child”.
6_ Audre Lorde. Litany for Survival
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